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The Forum > Article Comments > The return to Rudd: a turn for the worse on asylum seeker policy? > Comments

The return to Rudd: a turn for the worse on asylum seeker policy? : Comments

By Azadeh Dastyari, published 11/7/2013

We got an old/new Prime Minister in Kevin Rudd, found out that our first female Prime Minister was quitting politics, and learned what the Foreign Minister Bob Carr thinks of refugees and our international obligations to protect them.

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I bet there is nothing in the Convention about the variability of refugee determination, or about the most needy getting priority treatment instead of being shunted aside in favour of the less needy.

And the Convention is open-ended in terms of the number of refugees or asylum seekers applying for refugee status, which of course is a fundamental flaw, and one of the big reasons why we need to abandon it and develop a new protocol.

Rhian, what about my comments regarding the bigger picture? Shouldn’t we be concentrating our efforts on refugee and related issues through our formal refugee program and international aid, and be striving to stop the boats entirely?
Posted by Ludwig, Friday, 12 July 2013 10:49:01 AM
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I also am with Bob Carr. We need to get tougher of the Boat People. Marilynn Sheppard...if you have $10,000.00 to pay for placement on a leaky boat- no ID/passport, papers etc., you are not a refugee as far as I am concerned. I was also under the impression, that a refugee becomes the problem of the said country that is entered, from escaping their own country. They then can apply to immigrate to other countries through the proper procedures of that country's immigration requirements.
Posted by Shellybelly, Friday, 12 July 2013 12:21:30 PM
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SPQR
Where does the Convention instruct countries to give participants the benefit of the doubt? I must have missed that bit.

Divegence
Britain is an island, but nonetheless a lot easier to get into that Australia. Residents of the EU have rights of entry. There’s a tunnel, hundreds of international flights and a short boat trip from the continent, with regular ferries. There are also large numbers of freight movements –some asylum seeks enter hidden in containers. A smaller percentage of applicants in the UK are granted refugee status, but most are not detained, and most unsuccessful applicants appear to remain in Britain with indeterminate residency status. The situation is very different from here.

What do we do if we can’t identify a home country for failed asylum seekers? Work out where they are from (immigration officers often have a reasonable idea), get them to nominate a destination, or, if resettlement is not possible, put them in the community on a TPV if they are not a security risk.

Ludwig and Shellybelly
Whether a person has money has nothing to do with whether they are “genuine” refugees. I have friends who arrived here as refugees from the Croatian war of independence. They were educated, prosperous, middle class professionals, and they still had to flee for their lives, because their former neighbours would have killed them.
Posted by Rhian, Friday, 12 July 2013 4:07:35 PM
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@ Rhian,

<<SPQR Where does the Convention instruct countries to give participants the benefit of the doubt? I must have missed that bit>>

Here you are Rhian -in the UN publication titled:

<<Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees>>

http://www.unhcr.org/3d58e13b4.html

see section <<3) Summary>>

QUOTE:

<<(b) The examiner should:
(i) Ensure that the applicant presents his case as fully as possible and with all available evidence.
(ii) Assess the applicant's credibility and evaluate the evidence (if necessary giving the applicant the benefit of the doubt), in order to establish the objective and the subjective elements of the case>>
Posted by SPQR, Friday, 12 July 2013 4:59:37 PM
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... precisely

so it's not a question of give anone without substantiating evidence the benefit of the doubt, but rather:

“…when all available evidence has been obtained and checked and when the examiner is satisfied as to the applicant's general credibility. The applicant's statements must be coherent and plausible, and must not run counter to generally known facts.”

Not quite the free ticket you implied. In these circumstances, benefit of the doubt seem reasonable to me.
Posted by Rhian, Friday, 12 July 2013 5:29:48 PM
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Knock knock, Rhian,

There is NO <<substantiating evidence>>

They have no papers
They have no ID
They have no references

All they give us is a well rehearsed/rote learned generic story.

So --benefit of the doubt--they get rubber stamped :"found to be genuine"
Posted by SPQR, Friday, 12 July 2013 6:03:23 PM
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